Wandering Star (The Quintana Trilogy Book 1)

by Michael Wallace

  The hillside was so steep that the horses struggled to get the carriages moving again once the rail cars had passed. Ropes tied to the same hitch system the train had used served as emergency brakes in case the animals lost their footing. During the final hundred feet or so below the plateau, the passengers all got out of their carriages to walk so that the horses could get up and over without pulling the extra weight.

  Torre only managed about twenty feet before he stopped, leaned against his cane, and gasped for air. He waved for his companion to go on ahead, but Carbón stopped to wait, claiming he was also winded. Torre’s lined face showed skepticism, but he didn’t protest when the younger man took his arm. They continued another twenty paces before Torre had to stop for more rest. The others were up top already, as were the carriages, but Carbón waited patiently for his companion to recover his breath.

  “You’re a good man,” Torre said, wheezing. “I regret that I waited so long to get to know you, but I suppose I dismissed you as just another callow youth. The upper terraces are full of them.”

  “Almost as many as there are crotchety old men.”

  Torre chuckled. The lines smoothed from his face, and Carbón caught a glimpse of what he must have looked like in his youth, before age and tragedy had worn him down.

  “You remind me of my son,” Torre said.

  “I do?”

  “Ha, don’t give me that look. I don’t mean Daniel. My son Stefan—he died of the pox during the plague. A serious boy about the serious things, but trivial about what was trivial. Too bad you aren’t my son, eh?”

  “I had a father already. A good one.”

  “Yes, but he is dead now, and I still linger.” They were almost to the top, but Torre seemed to be enjoying his rest, stopping every ten paces or so. “Of course, you’d have to marry and give me grandchildren.”

  “Yes, naturally.”

  “Why haven’t you? It’s your duty, you know. Unless you plan to adopt like your father did. But that wasn’t his plan from the beginning. His family died tragically, and he had no choice.”

  “I’m aware of that,” Carbón said.

  Torre eyed him. “Excuse me. It is, of course, the duty of the old to lecture the young about what they already know, and the delight of the young to ignore it. But you won’t be young forever, remember that. And believe me, it comes up on you in a hurry.”

  The carriages were up ahead, and at last they got up and over the top to where the ground was flat. Torre wrapped his cloak around him, as if expecting a harsh breeze off the plateau, but the sun was shining, and the slight breeze was pleasant. He grunted and let it fall open again.

  The horses were heaving from their exertion climbing the hill, and the drivers filled buckets from a stream-fed trough between the rail and the road and let the horses drink. Ahead of them there was a bit of scrub, a few stunted trees, and then the grassy, undulating plain, broken by stretches of swampland, some bent pines that could take the wind and the harsh winter cold, and a few hillocks.

  Torre shielded his eyes and scanned the road ahead of them. “I used to come hunting up here. Hard to believe it has been so many years. There were more deer up here, then. The weather wasn’t so harsh.”

  “Is that where Daniel gets his love of the hunt?”

  “You see him up here, do you?”

  “Occasionally. Usually with a string of fowl or a doe slung over the saddle. He sets off in that direction.” Carbón pointed to a footpath leaving the road and bending toward some of the low-slung hills to the northwest.

  “My children all loved to hunt. So did my father and grandfather. None of us ever wasted our lives at it, though.”

  The horses were ready to go, Iliana and the others already in the lead carriage. Carbón helped Torre up to his seat and latched the door as the carriage set off. The horses seemed relieved to be on relatively flat ground and set a brisk pace.

  “Open the windows, will you?” Torre said. “The smell takes me back a few decades.”

  “You’re giving your nephew the ring, aren’t you?”

  Torre gave him a sharp look. “Who told you that?”

  “I was watching you after Mercado threw that boy off the cliff. You were looking at your daughter-in-law, who had . . . well, an ugly look on her face. And then you looked back and forth between Daniel and Pedro, and I guessed.”

  “Let’s hope nobody else is that observant. I’m not ready to make it official yet. Pedro is too young.”

  “Is that your secret? The one you alluded to in the baths that night?”

  Torre looked out the window. “No.”

  The carriage jostled along, hitting ruts and bumps, but coiled springs below the seats cushioned the worst of it, and Carbón normally found the motion relaxing, somnolent, even. On a warm day like today, a good chance to take a nap. Now, instead, he was watching Torre and wondering what his friend was hiding.

  “To answer your question,” Carbón said, “I can’t get married. Not unless the whole thing would be a sham.”

  “Ah, so that’s it. I wondered.” Torre shrugged. “Yours wouldn’t be the first. Pretend—at least in public—that you prefer women, and find some way to give your wife children.”

  “No, it isn’t that. I can’t have children, either.”

  Torre’s shaggy brows lifted in question.

  Carbón took a deep breath. “This boy, Santi, from the lower terraces . . .”

  “The one who touched the witherer in the mines, or whatever it was? The one you tried to ship out of the city, but his mother wouldn’t have it?”

  “I was once Santi.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was born in the dumbre, Torre. I was a mine worker.”

  Torre’s mouth dropped open. His breath rattled in his chest, which brought on a fit of coughing.

  Carbón waited until the coughing passed before pressing on. His heart was thumping with nervous energy. He had done nothing wrong, committed no crime, and if anyone could accept this news, it would be Lord Torre. Yet he was terrified to admit it.

  “I worked in the breaker. Twelve hours a day hunched over the belt with three dozen other boys, picking out rocks and debris. The foreman came by to beat us if we talked, to dump icy water over our heads if we drifted off to sleep. A boy fell into the breaker once, and they didn’t even stop the machinery. He was gone, screams over in a second—what was the point in stopping?”

  “Is this . . .” Torre began. “Is this real? It’s not a metaphor for something, is it?”

  Carbón gave a bitter laugh. “All too real. I remember it all, even though I left when I was nine. My mother was dead, my father and three older brothers worked in the mine itself. It was my entire existence.

  “Until one day, when there was a blast. Fire-damp—this was before the Luminoso showed us safety lamps. In fact, it was that explosion that did it. That made the cabalists find a solution to the mine explosions.”

  “I remember that. Ten, fifteen years ago, was it?”

  “Twenty now.”

  Torre scowled. “Can’t possibly be that long. Anyway . . . ?”

  “Men were trapped inside, scorched to leather. Others blasted out of the mine like they’d been shot from a cannon, together with their tools. I was coming off shift at the time, a hundred feet from the shaft entrance, when a pickax head struck me.”

  Carbón lifted his shirt and pulled down the top of his trousers. A mass of twisted scar tissue began at the navel and worked its way down. His fingers knew the ropy feel, every contour of it from top to bottom.

  “I see. And this is why you can’t . . . ?”

  “This is why I can’t. The scarring goes all the way down.” He shook his head. “I’ll never marry, never be a father. There will be no natural heirs.”

  “But why did your father—Lord Carbón, that is—adopt you? Surely you weren’t the only boy mangled that day?”

  “I don’t know. Guilt, maybe? Plenty of others were killed or injured, but
I also lost my father and all three of my brothers. They went looking for other family, and found nobody. Not an aunt or cousin. I can’t remember those early days after the injury with much clarity, but when I woke, I found myself recuperating at the Carbón estate. My father—my new father—told me later that I reminded him of one of his own sons. He was lonely, his entire family dead. My family was dead, too. That made us a match. He was a good man, and I was the most fortunate orphan in the city.”

  Torre let out a low whistle. “So you’re from the lower terraces. I’d have never guessed it. I always thought you were Carbón’s illegitimate child, adopted out of convenience, to blur the truth.”

  “No. From the dumbre all the way.”

  “Well,” Torre said.

  “Coal is corrosive, did you know that? You don’t notice when you’re tossing a lump or two into the fire—not that I ever touch the stuff myself, mind you. Not anymore. But I touched plenty of it before.

  “Your fingernails fall off, and the skin bleaches. You wrap your hands in rags to protect them, but you need your fingers free.” Carbón lifted his hands and showed his fingers to Torre. The tips were scarred, even after all these years. “It is the most miserable job imaginable.”

  He watched for the disgust on Torre’s face, but there was none. Instead, the other man only nodded. “A miserable existence all around, I would think.”

  “You’re not horrified?”

  “Of course I am, but not at you.” Torre shifted in his seat and glanced briefly out the window. “Well, I won’t lie. It’s making me squirm that you are—I mean, were—from the lower terraces. Who else knows?”

  “As far as I know, only one. Lady Mercado.”

  “And she hasn’t denounced you?”

  “Why would she?”

  “You saw what she did to that boy. Even his lover earned a whipping, and the girl was from the Thousand. How can Mercado even look at you without disgust?”

  “What she did to Rodi was perfectly understandable,” Carbón said. “That was his name—the boy from the dumbre she had thrown over the edge. Rodi. It was ugly, but understandable, if you know Mercado. A violation of the natural order, a breaking of the line between the lower terraces and the rest of us. The girl, too, if you think of it that way.”

  “That’s just what I mean,” Torre said. “There’s nobody more devout than Mercado. How can she look at you without loathing everything about you, knowing where you came from?”

  “Because it’s not against the code, and the code is everything to her. It’s why she gives so much gold to the temple. It’s why she offers her body to any and all on the Festival of Fools, and why she is in rags and ash the next morning at dawn. And it’s why my adopted father used Mercado to smooth my entry into the family.”

  “Because she is devout? I’m not quite sure I understand. What does that have to do with your adoption?”

  “Well . . .” Carbón began, and then stopped.

  That was the explanation that had been given to him by his father, but admittedly, it seemed to gloss over important details. Why had Mercado been the one to smooth the adoption with the Luminoso? Was it only the clout she gained from her generous contributions to the temple?

  “Never mind,” Torre said, when Carbón’s hesitation had stretched for several seconds. “Why are you telling me all this now?”

  “Because you now know both of my secrets. I know one of yours—that you are intending to give the steel ring to your nephew, not your son. But what about the other? What do you need my help for? It must be important.”

  Torre licked his lips and looked on the verge of explaining. But then he shook his head.

  “No, not yet. One crisis at a time, and this business in your mine is more than enough to occupy us both.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Torre hesitated before the open doors, the last to enter the mine. Afraid down to his bones, if he were honest with himself. He leaned against his cane and shuddered against the cold air working its way out of the shaft. Lights bobbed in the darkness ahead of him, leading the voices of his companions. The shaft already carried a strange echo even though his companions couldn’t be more than ten or fifteen feet in.

  He was still working up the nerve to enter when Iliana returned to the entrance, a concerned look on her face. She wore a boiled leather helmet with a little coal flame dancing within its ring of steel gauze.

  “Are you all right, Lord Torre?”

  “Bracing myself for the cold and damp. This sun feels awfully good on these old bones.”

  “The floor is a little wet. It’s better if I take your arm and help you.”

  “All right,” he said. “So long as I can keep my cane. Are the mine workers out of the way?”

  Iliana nodded. “Zayas moved them all to the eleven shaft, about a quarter of a mile from here. There’s a small seam to work—enough to keep them busy.”

  He was still hesitating. “So this mine is empty of people?”

  “Yes, you don’t need to . . . ah. I see.” A new note entered her voice, but it was not unkind. “Lord Carbón is afraid of your bridge, did you know that?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “You heard about the train stopping this morning?”

  “Aquino can be a stubborn fool.”

  “We walked out to see what was holding it up, and I think Carbón was anxious to meet your Basdeenian engineer. That’s when I found out he’s afraid of the Great Span. He kept thinking it would collapse and we’d all fall to the bottom.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Torre said quickly.

  “Oh, I know. Point is, he was afraid, and he was trembling the whole way. Just like you are now.”

  “I’m trembling from the cold.”

  “Of course. It is chilly, isn’t it?”

  He chuckled, the bridge momentarily forgotten. “You are a shameless liar, Iliana.”

  “And so are you, Your Grace. You’re terrified.”

  Torre was charmed by the young woman, and contrasted her easy, friendly manner with his daughter-in-law’s cunning cynicism.

  He took a deep breath. “All right. Lead me in.”

  The others were up front, walking slowly along the rail. Grosst was listening to Carbón’s best engineer, Eli Lozada, who was describing how he calculated the number and placement of coal pillars needed to hold up a mine’s ceiling. Torre and Iliana approached the rear of the group ahead, but stayed far enough back to speak privately.

  “Have you ever been inside a mine before?” Iliana asked.

  “Never. Why would I have? How about you?”

  “It’s only my second time. The other was a couple of weeks ago, after the boy found the artifact. Almost all of my work can be done in warmer, drier, and better-lit places. So, as you say, why would I have?”

  “Very sensible,” he said with a nod. “There are witherers down here.” Her lamp made the shadows dance grotesquely, and he gave a shudder. “Are you sure we’re not going to run into one?”

  “The mine is clean at the moment. That’s what they say anyway. This shaft gave birth to one last week after we discovered the artifact—but the boys left the door open until it had left. It’s at the bottom of the Rift by now.”

  He wasn’t sure he believed it. The strange movement of wandering stars seemed to have diminished, and with it the incursions of witherers and lemures into Quintana, but it still wasn’t safe to go out at night without a bit of lead and garlic about your person. Even then, there were reports of people found dead in their beds, bodies desiccated, paper-thin skin shrunk over skulls.

  And worse, Salvatore had announced at the temple that his astronomical observations promised that the season of wandering stars was only beginning, that it was likely to continue for weeks.

  They walked deeper and deeper into the mine, the shaft descending at a good pitch, and Torre was grateful for the young woman’s hand on his arm. It was steady, and her voice was smooth and calming.

  “It’s r
are that a witherer kills someone in the mines,” Iliana said. “Maybe twice a year. Compared to all the other ways you can die down here—explosions, cave-ins, getting run over by a coal car—it’s a minor risk.”

  She turned her cap with its little light toward a pair of half-filled coal cars linked together. They were about five feet high, four feet across, and six feet long.

  “Do you see the clasps on the ends of the cars? They’re called couplers. A man in this very shaft died last week when a pair of cars came together while he was standing between them. The couplers went through him and hooked together. Didn’t kill him right away, that’s the gruesome part.”

  “You’re not making me feel any safer, you know.”

  “Sorry.”

  A cold drop of water fell from the ceiling and somehow managed to slide right down his neck. His knees hurt from going down the steep grade. And it was getting colder. It all made him irritable.

  He raised his voice. “Blast it, how far down does this go, anyway?”

  “We’re almost there,” Carbón called back.

  They left the main shaft and entered a side corridor that bent and twisted even as it grew narrower. No rail here, only wheelbarrows, some partially filled, some empty. The others picked up their pace even as Torre had to slow to get around the obstacles. He and Iliana were soon left behind, struggling through the near darkness.

  Iliana seemed to lose her bravado, and began to tug on his arm to get him to hurry up.

  “Nothing to worry about,” he grumbled. “Isn’t that what you assured me? Just don’t knock your head against anything, or you’ll put out that light, and we’ll be left in the blackness. The boy came down here looking for chalk, you say? Whole lot of bother.”

  She didn’t answer, and he felt foolish. Ashamed, even, to be complaining. Just like any other old man, wasn’t he? He cleared his throat.

  “Um . . . thank you for staying with me.”

  Her normally pretty features looked pinched and pale in the thin light of her helmet lamp. “I’m sorry, Your Grace, I don’t mean to be impatient. It’s just . . . I don’t want to get lost down here.”